The Creatures That Time Forgot - 2

"We can't sit and talk and eat," he protested. "And _nothing_ else."
"There's always love," she retorted acidly. "It helps one forget. Gods,
yes," she spat it out. "Love!"
* * * * *
Sim ran through the tunnels, seeking. Sometimes he half imagined where
the Scientists were. But then a flood of angry thought from those
around him, when he asked the direction to the Scientists' cave, washed
over him in confusion and resentment. After all, it was the Scientists'
fault that they had been placed upon this terrible world! Sim flinched
under the bombardment of oaths and curses.
Quietly he took his seat in a central chamber with the children to
listen to the grown men talk. This was the time of education, the
Time of Talking. No matter how he chafed at delay, or how great his
impatience, even though life slipped fast from him and death approached
like a black meteor, he knew his mind needed knowledge. Tonight, then,
was the night of school. But he sat uneasily. Only _five_ more days of
life.
Chion sat across from Sim, his thin-mouthed face arrogant.
Lyte appeared between the two. The last few hours had made her firmer
footed, gentler, taller. Her hair shone brighter. She smiled as she sat
beside Sim, ignoring Chion. And Chion became rigid at this and ceased
eating.
The dialogue crackled, filled the room. Swift as heart beats, one
thousand, two thousand words a minute. Sim learned, his head filled.
He did not shut his eyes, but lapsed into a kind of dreaming that was
almost intra-embryonic in lassitude and drowsy vividness. In the faint
background the words were spoken, and they wove a tapestry of knowledge
in his head.
* * * * *
He dreamed of green meadows free of stones, all grass, round and
rolling and rushing easily toward a dawn with no taint of freezing,
merciless cold or smell of boiled rock or scorched monument. He walked
across the green meadow. Overhead the metal seeds flew by in a heaven
that was a steady, even temperature. Things were slow, slow, slow.
Birds lingered upon gigantic trees that took a hundred, two hundred,
five thousand days to grow. Everything remained in its place, the birds
did not flicker nervously at a hint of sun, nor did the trees suck back
frightenedly when a ray of sunlight poured over them.
In this dream people strolled, they rarely ran, the heart rhythm of
them was evenly languid, not jerking and insane. Their kisses were
long and lingering, not the parched mouthings and twitchings of lovers
who had eight days to live. The grass remained, and did not burn away
in torches. The dream people talked always of tomorrow and living and
not tomorrow and dying. It all seemed so familiar that when Sim felt
someone take his hand he thought it simply another part of the dream.
Lyte's hand lay inside his own. "Dreaming?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Things are balanced. Our minds, to even things, to balance the
unfairness of our living, go back in on ourselves, to find what there
is that is good to see."
He beat his hand against the stone floor again and again. "It does
not make things fair! I hate it! It reminds me that there is something
better, something I have missed! Why can't we be ignorant! Why can't we
live and die without knowing that this is an abnormal living?" And his
breath rushed harshly from his half-open, constricted mouth.
"There is purpose in everything," said Lyte. "This gives us purpose,
makes us work, plan, try to find a way."
His eyes were hot emeralds in his face. "I walked up a hill of grass,
very slowly," he said.
"The same hill of grass I walked an hour ago?" asked Lyte.
"Perhaps. Close enough to it. The dream is better than the reality." He
flexed his eyes, narrowed them. "I watched people and they did not eat."
"Or talk?"
"Or talk, either. And we always are eating, always talking. Sometimes
those people in the dream sprawled with their eyes shut, not moving a
muscle."
As Lyte stared down into his face a terrible thing happened. He
imagined her face blackening, wrinkling, twisting into knots of
agedness. The hair blew out like snow about her ears, the eyes were
like discolored coins caught in a web of lashes. Her teeth sank away
from her lips, the delicate fingers hung like charred twigs from
her atrophied wrists. Her beauty was consumed and wasted even as he
watched, and when he seized her, in terror, he cried out, for he
imagined his own hand corroded, and he choked back a cry.
"Sim, what's wrong?"
The saliva in his mouth dried at the taste of the words.
"Five more days...."
"The Scientists."
Sim started. Who'd spoken? In the dim light a tall man talked. "The
Scientists crashed us on this world, and now have wasted thousands of
lives and time. It's no use. It's no use. Tolerate them but give them
none of your time. You only live once, remember."
Where were these hated Scientists? Now, after the Learning, the Time of
Talking, he was ready to find them. Now, at least, he knew enough to
begin his fight for freedom, for the ship!
"Sim, where're you going?"
But Sim was gone. The echo of his running feet died away down a shaft
of polished stone.
* * * * *
It seemed that half the night was wasted. He blundered into a dozen
dead ends. Many times he was attacked by the insane young men who
wanted his life energy. Their superstitious ravings echoed after him.
The gashes of their hungry fingernails covered his body.
He found what he looked for.
A half dozen men gathered in a small basalt cave deep down in the cliff
lode. On a table before them lay objects which, though unfamiliar,
struck harmonious chords in Sim.
The Scientists worked in sets, old men doing important work, young
men learning, asking questions; and at their feet were three small
children. They were a process. Every eight days there was an entirely
new set of scientists working on any one problem. The amount of work
done was terribly inadequate. They grew old, fell dead just when they
were beginning their creative period. The creative time of any one
individual was perhaps a matter of twelve hours out of his entire span.
Three-quarters of one's life was spent learning, a brief interval of
creative power, then senility, insanity, death.
The men turned as Sim entered.
"Don't tell me we have a recruit?" said the eldest of them.
"I don't believe it," said another, younger one. "Chase him away. He's
probably one of those war-mongers."
"No, no," objected the elder one, moving with little shuffles of his
bare feet toward Sim. "Come in, come in, boy." He had friendly eyes,
slow eyes, unlike those of the swift inhabitants of the upper caves.
Grey and quiet. "What do you want?"
Sim hesitated, lowered his head, unable to meet the quiet, gentle gaze.
"I want to live," he whispered.
The old man laughed quietly. He touched Sim's shoulder. "Are you a new
breed? Are you sick?" he queried of Sim, half-seriously. "Why aren't
you playing? Why aren't you readying yourself for the time of love and
marriage and children? Don't you know that tomorrow night you'll be an
adolescent? Don't you realize that if you are not careful you'll miss
all of life?" He stopped.
Sim moved his eyes back and forth with each query. He blinked at the
instruments on the table top. "Shouldn't I be here?" he asked, naively.
"Certainly," roared the old man, sternly. "But it's a miracle you are.
We've had no volunteers from the rank and file for a thousand days!
We've had to breed our own scientists, a closed unit! Count us! Six!
Six men! And three children! Are we not overwhelming?" The old man spat
upon the stone floor. "We ask for volunteers and the people shout back
at us, 'Get someone else!' or 'We have no time!' And you know why they
say that?"
"No." Sim flinched.
"Because they're selfish. They'd like to live longer, yes, but they
know that anything they do cannot possibly insure their _own_ lives any
extra time. It might guarantee longer life to some future offspring of
theirs. But they won't give up their love, their brief youth, give up
one interval of sunset or sunrise!"
Sim leaned against the table, earnestly. "I understand."
"You do?" The old man stared at him blindly. He sighed and slapped the
child's thigh, gently. "Yes, of course, you do. It's too much to expect
anyone to understand, any more. You're rare."
The others moved in around Sim and the old man.
"I am Dienc. Tomorrow night Cort here will be in my place. I'll be dead
by then. And the night after that someone else will be in Cort's place,
and then you, if you work and believe--but first, I give you a chance.
Return to your playmates if you want. There is someone you love? Return
to her. Life is short. Why should you care for the unborn to come? You
have a right to youth. Go now, if you want. Because if you stay you'll
have no time for anything but working and growing old and dying at your
work. But it is good work. Well?"
Sim looked at the tunnel. From a distance the wind roared and blew,
the smells of cooking and the patter of naked feet sounded, and the
laughter of lovers was an increasingly good thing to hear. He shook
his head, impatiently, and his eyes were wet.
"I will stay," he said.

VI
The third night and third day passed. It was the fourth night. Sim was
drawn into their living. He learned about that metal seed upon the top
of the far mountain. He heard of the original seeds--things called
"ships" that crashed and how the survivors hid and dug in the cliffs,
grew old swiftly and in their scrabbling to barely survive, forgot all
science. Knowledge of mechanical things had no chance of survival in
such a volcanic civilization. There was only NOW for each human.
Yesterday didn't matter, tomorrow stared them vividly in their very
faces. But somehow the radiations that had forced their aging had
also induced a kind of telepathic communication whereby philosophies
and impressions were absorbed by the new born. Racial memory, growing
instinctively, preserved memories of another time.
"Why don't we go to that ship on the mountain?" asked Sim.
"It is too far. We would need protection from the sun," explained Dienc.
"Have you tried to make protection?"
"Salves and ointments, suits of stone and bird-wing and, recently,
crude metals. None of which worked. In ten thousand more life times
perhaps we'll have made a metal in which will flow cool water to
protect us on the march to the ship. But we work so slowly, so blindly.
This morning, mature, I took up my instruments. Tomorrow, dying, I lay
them down. What can one man do in one day? If we had ten thousand men,
the problem would be solved...."
"I will go to the ship," said Sim.
"Then you will die," said the old man. A silence had fallen on the room
at Sim's words. Then the men stared at Sim. "You are a very selfish
boy."
"Selfish!" cried Sim, resentfully.
The old man patted the air. "Selfish in a way I like. You want to live
longer, you'll do anything for that. You will try for the ship. But I
tell you it is useless. Yet, if you want to, I cannot stop you. At
least you will not be like those among us who go to war for an extra
few days of life."
"War?" asked Sim. "How can there be war here?"
And a shudder ran through him. He did not understand.
"Tomorrow will be time enough for that," said Dienc. "Listen to me,
now."
The night passed.

VII
It was morning. Lyte came shouting and sobbing down a corridor, and ran
full into his arms. She had changed again. She was older, again, more
beautiful. She was shaking and she held to him. "Sim, they're coming
after you!"
Bare feet marched down the corridor, surged inward at the opening.
Chion stood grinning there, taller, too, a sharp rock in either of his
hands. "Oh, there you are, Sim!"
"Go away!" cried Lyte savagely whirling on him.
"Not until we take Sim with us," Chion assured her. Then, smiling at
Sim. "_If_ that is, he is with us in the fight."
Dienc shuffled forward, his eye weakly fluttering, his bird-like hands
fumbling in the air. "Leave!" he shrilled angrily. "This boy is a
Scientist now. He works with us."
Chion ceased smiling. "There is better work to be done. We go now to
fight the people in the farthest cliffs." His eyes glittered anxiously.
"Of course, you will come with us, Sim?"
"No, no!" Lyte clutched at his arm.
Sim patted her shoulder, then turned to Chion. "Why are you attacking
these people?"
"There are three extra days for those who go with us to fight."
"Three extra days! Of living?"
Chion nodded firmly. "If we win, we live eleven days instead of eight.
The cliffs they live in, something about the mineral in it! Think of
it, Sim, three long, good days of life. Will you join us?"
Dienc interrupted. "Get along without him. Sim is my pupil!"
Chion snorted. "Go die, old man. By sunset tonight you'll be charred
bone. Who are you to order us? We are young, we want to live longer."
Eleven days. The words were unbelievable to Sim. Eleven days. Now he
understood why there was war. Who wouldn't fight to have his life
lengthened by almost half its total. So many more days of youth and
love and seeing and living! Yes. Why not, indeed!
"Three extra days," called Dienc, stridently, "_if_ you live to enjoy
them. If you're not killed in battle. _If. If!_ You have never won yet.
You have always lost!"
"But this time," Chion declared sharply, "We'll win!"
Sim was bewildered. "But we are all of the same ancestors. Why don't we
all share the best cliffs?"
Chion laughed and adjusted a sharp stone in his hand. "Those who live
in the best cliffs think they are better than us. That is always man's
attitude when he has power. The cliffs there, besides, are smaller,
there's room for only three hundred people in them."
Three extra days.
"I'll go with you," Sim said to Chion.
"Fine!" Chion was very glad, much too glad at the decision.
Dienc gasped.
Sim turned to Dienc and Lyte. "If I fight, and win, I will be half a
mile closer to the Ship. And I'll have three extra days in which to
strive to reach the Ship. That seems the only thing for me to do."
Dienc nodded, sadly. "It _is_ the only thing. I believe you. Go along
now."
"Good-bye," said Sim.
The old man looked surprised, then he laughed as at a little joke on
himself. "That's right--I won't see you again, will I? Good-bye, then."
And they shook hands.
They went out, Chion, Sim, and Lyte, together, followed by the others,
all children growing swiftly into fighting men. And the light in
Chion's eyes was not a good thing to see.
* * * * *
Lyte went with him. She chose his rocks for him and carried them. She
would not go back, no matter how he pleaded. The sun was just beyond
the horizon and they marched across the valley.
"Please, Lyte, go back!"
"And wait for Chion to return?" she said. "He plans that when you die I
will be his mate." She shook out her unbelievable blue-white curls of
hair defiantly. "But I'll be with you. If you fall, I fall."
Sim's face hardened. He was tall. The world had shrunk during the
night. Children packs screamed by hilarious in their food-searching and
he looked at them with alien wonder: could it be only four days ago
he'd been like these? Strange. There was a sense of many days in his
mind, as if he'd really lived a thousand days. There was a dimension
of incident and thought so thick, so multi-colored, so richly diverse
in his head that it was not to be believed so much could happen in so
short a time.
The fighting men ran in clusters of two or three. Sim looked ahead at
the rising line of small ebon cliffs. This, then, he said to himself,
is my fourth day. And still I am no closer to the Ship, or to anything,
not even--he heard the light tread of Lyte beside him--not even to her
who bears my weapons and picks me ripe berries.
One-half of his life was gone. Or a third of it--IF he won this battle.
_If._
He ran easily, lifting, letting fall his legs. This is the day of my
physical awareness, as I run I feed, as I feed I grow and as I grow I
turn eyes to Lyte with a kind of dizzying vertigo. And she looks upon
me with the same gentleness of thought. This is the day of our youth.
Are we wasting it? Are we losing it on a dream, a folly?
Distantly he heard laughter. As a child he'd questioned it. Now he
understood laughter. This particular laughter was made of climbing
high rocks and plucking the greenest blades and drinking the headiest
vintage from the morning ices and eating of the rock-fruits and tasting
of young lips in new appetite.
They neared the cliffs of the enemy.
He saw the slender erectness of Lyte. The new surprise of her white
breasts; the neck where if you touched you could time her pulse; the
fingers which cupped in your own were animate and supple and never
still; the....
Lyte snapped her head to one side. "Look ahead!" she cried. "See what
is to come--look only ahead."
He felt that they were racing by part of their lives, leaving their
youth on the pathside, without so much as a glance.
"I am blind with looking at stones," he said, running.
"Find new stones, then!"
"I see stones--" His voice grew gentle as the palm of her hand. The
landscape floated under him. Everything was like a fine wind, blowing
dreamily. "I see stones that make a ravine that lies in a cool shadow
where the stone-berries are thick as tears. You touch a boulder and the
berries fall in silent red avalanches, and the grass is very tender...."
"I do not see it!" She increased her pace, turning her head away.
He saw the floss upon her neck, like the small moss that grows silvery
and light on the cool side of pebbles, that stirs if you breathe the
lightest breath upon it. He looked upon himself, his hands clenched as
he heaved himself forward toward death. Already his hands were veined
and youth-swollen.
They were the hands of a young boy whose fingers are made for touching,
which are suddenly sensitive and with more surface, and are nervous,
and seem not a part of him because they are so big for the slender
lengths of his arms. His neck, through which the blood ached and
pumped, was building out with age, too, with tiny blue tendrils of
veins imbedded and flaring in it.
Lyte handed him food to eat.
"I am not hungry," he said.
"Eat, keep your mouth full," she commanded sharply. "So you will not
talk to me this way!"
"If I could only kiss you," he pleaded. "Just one time."
"After the battle there may be time."
"Gods!" He roared, anguished. "Who cares for battles!"
Ahead of them, rocks hailed down, thudding. A man fell with his skull
split wide. The war was begun.
Lyte passed the weapons to him. They ran without another word until
they entered the killing ground. Then he spoke, not looking at her, his
cheeks coloring. "Thank you," he said.
She ducked as a slung stone shot by her head. "It was not an easy
thing for me," she admitted. "Sim! Be careful!"
The boulders began to roll in a synthetic avalanche from the
battlements of the enemy!
* * * * *
Only one thought was in his mind now. To kill, to lessen the life of
someone else so he could live, to gain a foothold here and live long
enough to make a stab at the ship. He ducked, he weaved, he clutched
stones and hurled them up. His left hand held a flat stone shield with
which he diverted the swiftly plummeting rocks. There was a spatting
sound everywhere. Lyte ran with him, encouraging him. Two men dropped
before him, slain, their breasts cleaved to the bone, their blood
springing out in unbelievable founts.
It was a useless conflict. Sim realized instantly how insane the
venture was. They could never storm the cliff. A solid wall of rocks
rained down. A dozen men dropped with shards of ebony in their brains,
a half dozen more showed drooping, broken arms. One screamed and the
upthrust white joint of his knee was exposed as the flesh was pulled
away by two successive blows of well-aimed granite. Men stumbled over
one another.
The muscles in his cheeks pulled tight and he began to wonder why he
had ever come. But his raised eyes, as he danced from side to side,
weaving and bobbing, sought always the cliffs. He wanted to live there
so intensely, to have his chance. He would have to stick it out. But
the heart was gone from him.
Lyte screamed piercingly. Sim, his heart panicking, twisted and saw
that her hand was loose at the wrist, with an ugly wound bleeding
profusely on the back of the knuckles. She clamped it under her armpit
to soothe the pain. The anger rose in him and exploded. In his fury he
raced forward, throwing his missiles with deadly accuracy. He saw a man
topple and flail down, falling from one level to another of the caves,
a victim of his shot. He must have been screaming, for his lungs were
bursting open and closed and his throat was raw, and the ground spun
madly under his racing feet.
The stone that clipped his head sent him reeling and plunging back.
He ate sand. The universe dissolved into purple whorls. He could not
get up. He lay and knew that this was his last day, his last time. The
battle raged around him, dimly he felt Lyte over him. Her hands cooled
his head, she tried to drag him out of range, but he lay gasping and
telling her to leave him.
"Stop!" shouted a voice. The whole war seemed to give pause. "Retreat!"
commanded the voice swiftly. And as Sim watched, lying upon his side,
his comrades turned and fled back toward home.
"The sun is coming, our time is up!" He saw their muscled backs, their
moving, tensing, flickering legs go up and down. The dead were left
upon the field. The wounded cried for help. But there was no time for
the wounded. There was only time for swift men to run the gauntlet
home and, their lungs aching and raw with heated air, burst into their
tunnels before the sun burnt and killed them.
The sun!
Sim saw another figure racing toward him. It was Chion! Lyte was
helping Sim to his feet, whispering helpfully to him. "Can you walk?"
she asked. And he groaned and said, "I think so." "Walk then," she
said. "Walk slowly, and then faster and faster. We'll make it. Walk
slowly, start carefully. We'll make it, I know we will."
Sim got to his feet, stood swaying. Chion raced up, a strange
expression cutting lines in his cheeks, his eyes shining with battle.
Pushing Lyte abruptly aside he seized upon a rock and dealt Sim a
jolting blow upon his ankle that laid wide the flesh. All of this was
done quite silently.
Now he stood back, still not speaking, grinning like an animal from the
night mountains, his chest panting in and out, looking from the thing
he had done, to Lyte, and back. He got his breath. "He'll never make
it," he nodded at Sim. "We'll have to leave him here. Come along, Lyte."
Lyte, like a cat-animal, sprang upon Chion, searching for his eyes,
shrieking through her exposed, hard-pressed teeth. Her fingers stroked
great bloody furrows down Chion's arms and again, instantly, down his
neck. Chion, with an oath, sprang away from her. She hurled a rock at
him. Grunting, he let it miss him, then ran off a few yards. "Fool!"
he cried, turning to scorn her. "Come along with me. Sim will be dead
in a few minutes. Come along!"
Lyte turned her back on him. "I will go if you carry me."
Chion's face changed. His eyes lost their gleaming. "There is no time.
We would both die if I carried you."
Lyte looked through and beyond him. "Carry me, then, for that's how I
wish it to be."
Without another word, glancing fearfully at the sun, Chion fled. His
footsteps sped away and vanished from hearing. "May he fall and break
his neck," whispered Lyte, savagely glaring at his form as it skirted a
ravine. She returned to Sim. "Can you walk?"
* * * * *
Agonies of pain shot up his leg from the wounded ankle. He nodded
ironically. "We could make it to the cave in two hours, walking. I have
an idea, Lyte. Carry me." And he smiled with the grim joke.
She took his arm. "Nevertheless we'll walk. Come."
"No," he said. "We're staying here."
"But why?"
"We came to seek a home here. If we walk we will die. I would rather
die here. How much time have we?"
Together they measured the sun. "A few minutes," she said, her voice
flat and dull. She held close to him.
He looked at her. Lyte, he thought. Tomorrow I would have been a man.
My body would have been strong and full and there would have been time
with you, a kissing and a touching. Damn, but what kind of life is this
where every last instant is drenched with fear and alert with death? Am
I to be denied even some bit of real life?
The black rocks of the cliff were paling into deep purples and browns
as the sun began to flood the world.
What a fool he was! He should have stayed and worked with Dienc, and
thought and dreamed, and at least one time cupped Lyte's mouth with his
own.
With the sinews of his neck standing out defiantly he bellowed upward
at the cliff holes.
"Send me down one man to do battle!"
Silence. His voice echoed from the cliff. The air was warm.
"It's no use," said Lyte, "They'll pay no attention."
He shouted again. "Hear me!" He stood with his weight on his good foot,
his injured left leg throbbing and pulsating with pain. He shook a
fist. "Send down a warrior who is no coward! I will not turn and run
home! I have come to fight a fair fight! Send a man who will fight for
the right to his cave! Him I will surely kill!"
More silence. A wave of heat passed over the land, receded.
"Oh, surely," mocked Sim, hands on naked hips, head back, mouth wide,
"surely there's one among you not afraid to fight a cripple!" Silence.
"No?" Silence.
"Then I have miscalculated you. I'm wrong. I'll stand here, then, until
the sun shucks the flesh off my bone in black scraps, and call you the
filthy names you deserve."
He got an answer.
"I do not like being called names," replied a man's voice.
Sim leaned forward, forgetting his crippled foot.
A huge man appeared in a cave mouth on the third level.
"Come down," urged Sim. "Come down, fat one, and kill me."
The man scowled seriously at his opponent a moment, then lumbered
slowly down the path, his hands empty of any weapons. Immediately every
cave above clustered with heads. An audience for this drama.
The man approached Sim. "We will fight by the rules, if you know them."
"I'll learn as we go," replied Sim.
This pleased the man and he looked at Sim warily, but not unkindly.
"This much I will tell you," offered the man generously. "If you die, I
will give your mate shelter and she will live, as she pleases, because
she is the wife of a good man."
Sim nodded swiftly. "I am ready," he said.
"The rules are simple. We do not touch each other, save with stones.
The stones and the sun will do either of us in. Now is the time--"

VIII
A tip of the sun showed on the horizon. "My name is Nhoj," said
Sim's enemy, casually fingering up a handful of pebbles and stones,
weighing them. Sim did likewise. He was hungry. He had not eaten
for many minutes. Hunger was the curse of this planet's peoples--a
perpetual demanding of empty stomachs for more, more food. His blood
flushed weakly, shot tinglingly through veins in jolting throbs of
heat and pressure, his ribcase shoved out, went in, shoved out again,
impatiently.